


Apricity: 100 Word Love Stories

by lovedhumanity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel and Dean Winchester in Love, Idiots in Love, M/M, Profound100 Challenge (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28561596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovedhumanity/pseuds/lovedhumanity
Summary: A collection of 100 word drabbles that tell the love story between a broken man and the angel who loved him, and in so doing fell and broke himself.This is the story of Dean Winchester, and of Castiel.Written for the ProfoundBond server's PB100 challenge.Trigger warnings will be labeled in the notes at the beginning as they apply, rather than on the series as a whole.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 1
Collections: ProfoundBond Drabble Challenge





	1. Corner

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings for Chapter One: Season 15 Spoilers, Season 15 Episode 18 Spoilers, Major Character Death (Cas is taken by the Empty).

**Corner**

* * *

Dean Winchester is trapped in a corner, the place where two conflicting roads meet to create an equally conflicted man. A moment is not enough time for love. And still, they are _moments_ that flash before him: a handprint, first on his shoulder, then squeezing down on his heart. Green trapped in blue, and the moments are passing by too quickly. _Don’t do this,_ he thinks, uncertain if the words are spoken into the too-thick air. _Not now. Not like this._

_Me too,_ his heart screams, with every act of carefully placed defiance, every moment spent mourning loss and equally rejoicing return. _Me too,_ he wants to scream, as though love can save them, as though love can do anything at all.

Too little, too late. The angel is gone.


	2. Gesture

**Gesture**

* * *

Humans are fallible creatures. They are stacked with good intentions that ultimately crumble beneath the weight of the human condition. It cannot be helped. Castiel’s father had given them free will, a radical choice that would prove to be both blessing and curse.

And Dean Winchester now asks for what he calls ‘a gesture of good faith’, a notion that goes against everything that Castiel has ever known. Something stirs in his chest, some misplaced remnant of his human vessel. And he cannot understand it, cannot fathom the recklessness of his decision, but regardless of it, he affirms his consent. He does not know that what is now  _ trust  _ is a stepping stone to what might later be called  _ ‘love’ _ .


	3. Vibe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Content Warnings: Major Character Death (Castiel), the aftermath of 15 x 18, Dean POV, Grieving Castiel.

**Vibe**

* * *

Without Castiel, the world gives off a black and white vibe. It’s that old-fashioned Mayberry kind of ordeal. The world is righted of its injustices, it keeps spinning. Dean’s been given the chance to live the life he’s always wanted. _Retirement_ with a white picket fence and an apple pie in the window: it’s always been his end goal. Right?

Except now, he realizes that within his heart, that ending also bore ocean-blue eyes, and an old ratty trenchcoat. More than the comfort of a white picket fence, maybe it had always been about the _idea_ of two arms around him at his worst. ‘I love you’ was a prelude. How can he live a life in gray when he’s beheld a spectrum of color that he only just learned bore the name ‘ _love_ ’?


	4. Crest

**Crest**

* * *

There are seagulls overhead, singing their off-key melodies. The ocean swells and reaches its crest, white foamed and infinite. Bare toes wiggle and sink into sand, and Dean discovers only as he bounds toward infinity that he cannot run. The sand is different here than in the desert, moist and thick, teeming with life.

He finally catches up to Cas, wraps his arms him as lukewarm water rushes to greet him. It’s up to their ankles now, and like all things, it comes and goes in turn. Dean chuckles, planting a soft kiss against the back of the angel’s nape, “What was the point of me goin’ through all that effort to roll up your pants and make you take your shoes off,” another kiss, “if you were gonna forget to take off the coat.”

If one could see this tender moment from further upshore, they would glimpse silhouettes melting into the sunset, both figures turning to embrace, and then...  _ simply being _ . 


	5. Pew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Dean thinking he's lost Cas in Purgatory, grief.

**Pew**

* * *

They look at him in passing as though he is a ghost haunting their holy place: their church, their sacred pews, lined with Bibles and faith. They whisper words in harsh judgment. He doesn’t look the praying type, he knows that. It’s just that there’s so little left of him to care about who he was before purgatory.

So he’s learned to pray. Pray, as everyone does, to something that they hope exists. They pray for an answer, pray for a sign, pray for God. Dean Winchester prays for Castiel, although the church is not the first place that he’s looked. He’s kissed the pillow where Castiel had laid beside him, has fitted his fingers into the dulled scar against his arm. He has shed tears, and shed whatever is left of his soul upon every place that was sacred to he and the angel. None of them have brought him back. And so he prays with everyone else. The faithless with the faithful, the one with the many. _Cas...Castiel... can you hear me? Can you hear me?_


	6. Rival

**Rival**

* * *

His eyes make a rival of the color blue. They shame the summer skies, make him think of the smell of fresh cut grass and lazy Saturdays. They recall to Dean’s memory billowy clouds and their shapes, naming each one passing overhead like it were its own constellation. 

In Castiel’s eyes, he can almost taste seawater, blue and turquoise swirled, salty and thick; can hear the sound that they say is the ocean, held to one’s ear in form of a conch shell. They’re prettier than travel brochures laid out at the dime a dozen highway motels. His eyes are not a tourist trap, but they’ve captured Dean within them. They make him think of summer, of warmth. It’s the closest thing to home he’s ever had.


	7. Sweat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning for very vague sexual themes.

**Sweat**

* * *

_Never let them see you sweat._

The gospels of John Winchester, and rule number 24,601 playing on repeat in Dean’s head, telling him how he should act and who he should be. First problem: he doesn’t want to be that man anymore, wants to be his own. His own, and maybe Cas’s too. 

Second problem: he can’t tell if it’s sweat or if they are tears falling down his cheeks. He is nestled beneath Cas, and they’ve taken to lazily rutting against each other, both spent at day’s end. Lips tenderly seek out lips, almost desperate as if to say _please don’t go_. If ‘never let them see you sweat’ means never to be vulnerable, he’d thrown that one out the window the second he’d laid eyes on the love of his life.


End file.
